119 • JONATHAN CASTILLO

Our guest is Jonathan Michael Castillo, a photographer, visual artist and educator whose work examines immigration, labor, debt, and the systems of government that shape everyday life. He is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography and a Joyce Foundation Artadia Awardee, and his photographs are permanently installed at O’Hare International Airport.In this episode, Jonathan speaks with host Christian Solorzano about his first encounter with a camera: volunteering on his church’s TV ministry as a teenager, until a pastor stopped a sermon to scold him in front of the congregation. He traces the path from a photo elective at Moorpark College in 2001, through years photographing paintball tournaments, to committing fully to photography in 2008.Jonathan talks about Immigrant Owned, his ongoing series of portraits of immigrant business owners and the spaces they’ve built. He explains how it began as a counter-narrative to anti-immigrant sentiment and how he directs a portrait through small, simple instructions. He also explains why he prefers quiet portraits to big smiles, and describes the moment airport workers recognized their own culture in his installation at O’Hare.The conversation also covers Car Culture, which he photographed from a moving car, and the Chicago Photo League, the nonprofit school he co-founded as an alternative to costly art education. Jonathan also discusses the question AI is forcing every photographer to answer, and his Guggenheim project to take Immigrant Owned across the United States.Music by the band Eighties Slang.Relevant links:https://chicagographicdesign.club/http://www.jonmichaelphoto.com/

Our guest is Craighton Berman, a designer, illustrator, and founder of Manual, a company that makes objects for slow living. He has been based in Chicago since 2002.In this episode, Craighton speaks with host Christian Solorzano from his new studio at Workshop 4200 in Belmont Cragin, a space he laid out as a map of how he thinks. He traces his path from the Virginia suburbs of DC to Chicago: studying engineering because that’s what he thought you did, then hearing from a teacher that his drawings were what industrial designers do, and finding the industrial design program at Virginia Tech. He also shares how The Far Side and Mad Magazine shaped him, and why he still reads those Mad issues with his kids.Craighton talks openly about a hard couple of years: tariffs stalling Manual, giving up a studio, and finding his way back through teaching senior thesis research at UIC and making new work. He explains Manual as a reaction to making everything friction-free, and why he values the ritual and craft of doing things by hand.The conversation also takes on the future of design. Craighton worries about AI pulling the ladder up on junior designers, describes what his son asked him about whether there would be a place for him in design, and admits to holding two ideas at once: he critiques the technology and also uses it. He closes with what’s bringing him joy, from Theaster Gates’ Land School to NTS Radio.Craighton’s work is also featured in our new magazine, Faculty, available now for pre-order.Music by the band Eighties Slang.

Our guest is Elaine Lopez, a designer and educator who teaches at Parsons and spent the formative years of her design career in Chicago.In this episode, Elaine speaks with host Christian Solorzano about her first typography class at the University of Florida, a class so overwhelming she had to take a long walk around campus afterward, and how that challenge drew her into design. She shares the story of a Labor Day weekend visit to Chicago that made her feel at home for the first time, and her decision to quit her job in Miami and move during the recession.Elaine talks about her years in Chicago, from PowerPoints and pharmaceutical marketing to point-of-purchase work at Leo Burnett's Arc, field research at Gravitytank, and social impact work at Greater Good Studio. She reflects on six months working with Rick Valicenti and Thirst to help Columbus, Indiana return to Paul Rand's original identity, and on what she learned watching Rick present work to a room.The conversation explores identity and representation in design, why they led her to teaching, and how she builds community in the classroom. Elaine also discusses her love of Riso printing, the value of slow and inefficient work in the age of AI, her preference for "protopia" over utopia, and what she still carries with her from Chicago.Music by the band Eighties Slang.

Our guest is Jonathan Nesci, a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, furniture, and fine art. He grew up in Oak Lawn, spent eleven years in Columbus, Indiana, and now works out of a studio on his brother's farm about an hour outside Chicago, in collaboration with a guild of high-craft makers throughout the Midwest.In this episode, Jonathan speaks with host Christian Solorzano about an origin story that begins in a sandbox — his grandfather owned a concrete block company in Des Plaines, had fresh sand delivered every summer, and made him a chest of hand-sanded wooden blocks. Jonathan traces that state of play forward through a fundamentalist Baptist school, a thirty-foot BMX ramp in his driveway, and five years driving a forklift at FedEx, where a coworker named Brian asked whether he knew that people design furniture for a living.Jonathan describes cold-emailing Richard Wright, breaking a thirty-thousand-dollar Gio Ponti desk in his first two months at the auction house, and discovering that the job was never about repairing things himself. It was about finding the upholsterer, the glass guy, the welder. That model became his entire practice, and he makes a case for it in an essay he calls Craft Surrogates: producing a thing doesn't make it any less yours.The conversation turns to systems and constraint. Jonathan describes himself as a formalist — form drives everything, while scale, material and finish stay open. He talks about designing around what local fabricators can already do, about the golden ratio as a framework that scales endlessly in both directions, and about the H1 coffee table he built in 2006 after being rejected from a juried competition, simply to find out whether he could.He also tells the story behind 100 Variations, the hundred mirror-polished aluminum tables he installed in the sunken courtyard of Eliel Saarinen's First Christian Church in Columbus — including the moment a local architect told him, mid-pitch, that the courtyard had once been a reflecting pool, and the week in which three organizations funded the whole project. It became the pilot for Exhibit Columbus.Along the way, Jonathan speaks about faith and hope on his own terms, about what meditation clarified for him in 2017, about why he now sells almost entirely to the trade, and about why, six years into a sculpture practice, he feels like a kid again.Underscore is produced by the Chicago Graphic Design Club.Music by the band Eighties Slang.

Our guest is Alisa Wolfson, EVP and Head of Design at Leo Chicago, where she built the agency's design department.Alisa grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and found design sideways. Her dad was in the wine import-export business, and she kept asking if she could design the labels — she didn't yet know that what she wanted to do had a name. She taught herself design history and layout, made projects in her garage, shot her portfolio on slide film, and applied to a program a friend had gone through. She still has the Kodak Carousel that portfolio came back in. She got to VSA by calling until somebody finally picked up.In this episode, Alisa speaks with host Christian Solorzano about being a generalist among specialists, and about what it took to figure out how she actually wanted to work. She describes the stretch she spent working for herself and finding it lonely, and walking into Leo expecting a short freelance project.The conversation turns on a question about polish. Alisa argues that almost nothing made for a brand reaches us unedited — that the images built to look like someone's bathroom have been edited too — and that designers have been standing right next to that since the beginning of advertising. She doesn't think that's cause for despair.She also talks about what makes collaboration work, why she thinks happy is a weird word, the Chicago designers she came up around, and a project she once made about her own hair, with a line in the corner she remembers as "I take myself wherever I go."

Our next guest is Anne H. Berry — designer, writer, educator, and Director of the School of Design at the University of Illinois Chicago.In this episode, Anne speaks with host Christian Solorzano about her path into design — how a middle school visit to a publishing house sparked something in her, and how that spark took years to find its footing. She's candid about the periods of doubt, a toxic early work environment, and the graduate school experience that finally brought everything together.Anne discusses her two books — The Black Experience in Design and her upcoming Guiding Principles for Inclusive Design Values — and why both feel more urgent now than when she started them. She speaks directly about what design owes to democracy, the chilling effect of anti-DEI legislation on creative work, and why she believes designers cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.The conversation also explores what brought Anne to Chicago, what sustains her on the hard days, and what it means to build a career rooted in service — to students, to the community, and to the people coming up behind her.Anne will also be featured in the upcoming issue of Faculty, a publication by the Chicago Graphic Design Club.Music by the band Eighties Slang.

Our guest is Coby Regehr, son of Carl Regehr (1919–1983)— a graphic designer, educator, and community builder who helped shape Chicago's visual identity.In this episode, Coby speaks with host Christian Solorzano about his father's life, work, and philosophy — from a Mennonite upbringing in Kansas to building a design practice in Chicago rooted in ethics, relationships, and an unrelenting drive to create. Coby shares what it was like to grow up inside that world — weekends spent in his father's studio, Summers at the Indiana Dunes alongside the designers who defined an era, and a father who was up at four every morning with Coltrane on the stereo.The conversation explores Carl's role in reframing Chicago's image through the 1963 Chicago magazine — his uncompromising ethics in business, his teaching philosophy at the University of Illinois, and his participation in the 1971 Aspen Design Conference.Coby also reflects on the boxes of journals, collages, and unfinished work he continues to discover — and what it means to be the keeper of a legacy still unfolding.Music by the band Eighties Slang.

Our guest is Dana Arnett, Co-Founder and Chairman of VSA Partners — one of Chicago's most celebrated and enduring design firms.In this episode, Dana speaks with host Christian Solorzano about a career that began in the cornfields of Morton, Illinois and grew into four decades of work with some of the world's most iconic brands. He reflects on the sophomore portfolio rejection that redirected everything, and the three serendipitous mentors — Robert Vogele, Rick Valicenti, and April Greiman — who each shaped his creative courage in a different way.Dana traces the building of VSA from a storefront on South Dearborn to a firm of 375 people, and the landmark client relationships — including the Chicago Board of Trade and Harley-Davidson — that defined an era of Chicago design. He speaks candidly about what it means to lead without getting in the way, the fragmentation happening across the design industry today, and the questions he still asks every time he picks up a pencil.The conversation closes with a genuine reckoning with AI — not as a technology conversation, but as a craft and labor conversation — and VSA's three-word design philosophy that has guided the firm from the beginning: empathy, optimism, and intent.Music by the band Eighties Slang.

Our guest is Jarrett Fuller, a designer, writer, educator, and host of the long-running podcast Scratching the Surface, based in Raleigh, North Carolina.In this episode, Jarrett speaks with host Christian Solorzano about how conversation became the organizing principle of his creative life — from growing up surrounded by a large, talkative extended family, to a journalist grandfather who taught him the difference between a closed question and an open one. He reflects on ten years and nearly 300 episodes of Scratching the Surface, what he's learned about listening, and why the questions keep multiplying rather than resolving.Jarrett shares his evolving relationship to graphic design — how he still claims the title even as the work has shifted toward writing, teaching, and podcasting — and why he believes the field has always been more expansive than the industry gives it credit for. He talks about the tension between design as a commercial discipline and design as a cultural practice, the homogenization of aesthetics in the age of AI, and what it means to make work that actually moves someone.The conversation also explores Jarrett's photography — his interest in the friction between the natural world and the built environment, returning to the same places over time, and the design sensibility that shapes how he frames an image. And he gives a preview of his forthcoming book, Graphic Designers After Graphic Design, a celebration of designers around the world redefining what the field can be — due out September 29th.Music by the band Eighties Slang.

Our guest is Jo-Nell Sieren, a photographer, designer, and educator who spent fifteen years at Columbia College Chicago before moving into her current role at Northwestern, where she focuses on industry strategy and connecting design and engineering students to employers.In this episode, Jo-Nell speaks with host Christian Solorzano about her path from studying photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York to building one of Columbia's most ambitious student programs — Agency Columbia, a studio that placed students in real client engagements with real deadlines. She shares how that experience of learning through doing, not just observing, shaped her entire philosophy as an educator.Jo-Nell talks candidly about what it actually takes to build confidence in students who don't yet believe in their own work, why she considers networking a design skill in its own right, and what a cohort of exhausted, overcommitted, fully present students taught her about resilience. She also reflects on the anxiety she feels watching AI reshape both the creative landscape and the job search — and what she hopes the next generation of designers holds onto.Music by the band Eighties Slang.